1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates generally to selecting background music for a variety of images, and more particularly to a system and method for automatically selecting music based on information associated with a series of images selected by a user at a client computer.
2. Description of the Related Art
Conventional music playing devices automatically associate audio files on a user's hard-drive or portable device with images relating to the audio files. For example, various audio devices and software will associate an audio file with its artist or album. This software employs information found in the metadata and file name of the music file in combination with information on a local or remote database to identify images related to the artist or album associated with the music file. Once identified, the software will commonly display images associated with the audio file while playing the audio file. These images may be retrieved from a local drive or a remote internet location.
To select an image associated with an audio file, the audio play software requires the audio file to contain metadata directly associating the image with the audio file. This allows the audio playing software to uniquely select an image using the audio file metadata.
Alternatively, image presentation software and image album software generally allows a user to combine multiple images into a complete slideshow or album. The software may also allow the user to combine viewing of the images with audio content including short or long duration audio content to provide themes or information relating to the visual content of the presentation or album.
However, the process of including music with an image presentation or album is a manual process beyond the capabilities of the conventional user. For example, in order to produce an audio/visual presentation, the software generally requires the user to associate images with audio. Creating this association involves manually assembling the image content and audio content for the presentation and, using the software to arrange the image content and identify instances in time where the audio content should begin and end.